Online shopping: e-commerce

Sell direct to the public, online!

The first step to achieving success through e-commerce or an online shop is to establish why you’re doing it and what you want to achieve. Sometimes an online shop won’t be the best solution and there may be simpler methods to sell your products online. By contacting Greaves Design, we’ll be able to discuss your vision and needs with you, to advise you on whether an online shop is right for your business.

E-commerce options

There are 3 main options for e-commerce or online shopping. Each has its own features which may be better suited to some businesses than others. Again, we can advise you on the right options for you.

The first type of e-commerce is ‘buy it now’ products – a simple website with 1 ‘buy now’ button. This is useful if you want to promote just one or two products with a simple system for example. It’s also very quick and easy to set up. If you link into PayPal, for example, PayPal don’t even charge for setting this up.

Buy it Now: key points

Useful if selling a small number of products

Cost-effective to set up

Low risk, in terms of both time and money

A great way to dip your toe in the water of e-commerce

Great if you sell a service

Great if you want to use just to take deposits

You can also email the ‘buy now’ button to people for them to make a payment

Subscriptions e-commerce is ideal if you want to sell subscriptions or take recurring payments for items. If, say, you want to sell recurring payments for weekly food delivery, this option can be really useful. For example, you may want customers to subscribe to your vegetable box deliveries at a cost of £10 per month. Again, it is very easy to set a PayPal option up, and cheap to get started.

Once you are using payment providers such as WorldPay or Sage Pay, it starts becoming more complicated and expensive, but we can guide you through this and help you work out the best option for you.

Subscriptions: key points

Useful to accept recurring payments which can be daily/weekly/monthly/annually

Automated regular payment collection

Forget about collecting money: it’s all taken care of

You can offer trial periods

You can offer discount periods

Great if you sell a service which needs to be paid for regularly

If you have multiple products and want to have a full shopping cart, then this third option is for you. The full shopping cart service means you can have a complete online shop, built just for you. There’s more work involved in setting this up, but when you have 100, 1000 or even 10000 products for sale, you need a proper system that will handle the administration involved in all customers and their orders for you. This can be a great option if you already have a physical shop or retail premises, and want to branch out into selling your products online.

Full shopping cart: key points

Sell multiple products

Manage customers and their accounts

Manage orders automatically

Manage full processing system

Link into Google Products

The more products you have, the better it is for Google if all the keywords and content are in place

Why Choose Us?

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We have a track record of building hundreds of websites

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Our customer services is second to none.

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We are available at any time if you wish to know something.

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The website is only the beginning – use our website for resources and more helpful information.

What Clients Say

“The price that was given was the price that was paid at the end, there was full input with both parties from start to finish great to know that at any time I could change or rewrite the website, Just a first class service all the way.”

Customer in Dundee

About Us

Greaves Design is a web design company based in Horsham, Sussex that in addition to offering great Social Media Consultancy specialises in creating and setting up affordable sites for small businesses around the South East.

We have been around since 2001 and have supplied hundreds of websites to hundreds of satisfied clients. Please contact us for more information.